I have somehow survived

[katho]

So I have 13 images I need to draw or collect and post. I'm going to do it in batches. Here are the first few.













Automatic drawing. I like automatic drawings. Looks kind of like a spider -- reminds me of Georges Bataille.





Halloween makeup!

This took 2 hours. Something I'd like to try again. Ryan couldn't look at me -- especially when I smiled, because I had four rows of teeth. apparently it was most alarming. I didn't like the fact that I had to use grease paint; it was so goopy and would have been tremendously impractical to wear to work or anything.

Now I have to get started on my manifesto and what I'm going to do for my artwork, and my final Art History essay. Here are the topics:

1. Why was photomontage so important in the 20's and 30's?
   
   I thought this would be interesting. I'd have to do some preliminary research.
   Here's an NY Times article about a show on the subject: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3D7153FF932A05756C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
   The library has the catalog to the show so I could always start with that.
   
2. Discuss the fate of the constructivist project from its beginning to 1945.
   
   Would be vaguely interesting, and Tatlin's work is so ... reflective? In such a stupidly awesome way (Letatlin! Monument!). But I have been talking a lot about this in the past couple of weeks and I did a project on Tatlin last year, so it might get kind of monotonous.
   
3. Explain why Clement Greenberg's crticiusm has been so important for modern art in the united states. Give some description of his theories and disucuss why opposition to his thesis could be so violent?
   
   I am with the 'violent opposition'; as is, I gather from some of the readings in this class, my prof. But having to read as much Greenberg as I imagine I would, and having to think about how much it bothers me and why and why it bothers other people might be kind of emotionally draining. Or it might make the essay really easy to right; when I finished reading The Avant-Garde and Kitsch I came home (I read it on the bus) and wrote a rant about why the arguments put forward by Greenberg about what is kitsch and what is Art are applied with varying amounts of rigidity depending upon the time of the artist and the politics of the artist and their time. I would definitely find things to say.
   
   
4. "Roughly speaking, the history of painting from Manet through Synthetic Cubism and Matisse may be characterized in terms of the gradual withdrawal of painting from the task of representing reality -- or of reality from the power of paitning to represent it -- in favour of an increasing preoccupation with problems intrinsic to painting itself." What do you think about Michael Fried's assertion? Explain.
   
   I don't really care that much about that particular 'stream' of art history, and [before doing further research] I would be tempted to follow a line having something to do with the change .. meh.
   
5. Picasso and the "Retour a l'ordre"
   
   Retour a l'order is one of the more boring responses to WWI I've seen in cultural production from that era, (Dada and modernist literature are way more entertaining, IMO) but I guess as a section of Picasso's career and in contrast to the rest of his work ... and then how he reacted to the beginning of WWII was totally different ..
   
6. Explain the importance of "Automatism" in the late 1920's.
   
   I think automatism is an interesting artistic technique, and I like playing with it myself, so this would be a fertile research area for me, I think.
   
   
7. Compare the interest in "primitivism" in France and the USA in the 1940's.
   
   I don't know a lot about what was different about primitivism in France and the USA, but ... primitivism ... just primitivism .. kind of imagining some irritating research for this ...
   
   
8. Surrealism and politics after the Second World War.
   
   I know what was happening up to WWII with surrealism and politics (Breton + Communist Party = Much Tension) but I don't know a lot about what happened after; this would probably be pretty interesting.
   
   
9. Women and Surrealist artists in the 1930's: hopes and deceptions.
   
   This would be totally cool as it is a totally screwed up thing to talk about -- You get Claude Cahun, and then you have Masson's automatic drawings, Hans Bellmer's dolls, the fascination with the Papin sisters and the other women murderers ... lots of research would be required before I can choose a thesis worth talking about, but there's so much written the research would be easy to do and would probably be crazily interesting. And what does he actually mean by "hopes and deceptions"?

*shrug* I should go to bed.